Monthly Archives: September 2014

HERE IS A GREAT, QUICK VIDEO ABOUT ASKING YOURSELF THE BEST QUESTIONS EVERYDAY AND THROUGHOUT YOUR LIFE.

I’VE DISCUSSED HOW QUESTIONS HAVE IMPACTED MY LIFE, PERSPECTIVE, THOUGHTS, AND MORE and HOW QUESTIONS HAVE LOTS OF POWER – GOOD OR BAD.

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FROM:Robbins-Madanes Training Have you ever wondered what goes on in the head of people (especially young people!) when they make decisions you simply don’t understand?

Well, in today’s 11 minute video you’re going to learn one of the most surprising principles of human behavior. It’s called your Primary Question.

Your Primary Question may be the most powerful force in your life, because it guides your mental focus:

What you notice.
What you react to.
What you decide.

When you understand your Primary Question, you can change what you notice, what you react to, and what you decide – and this will transform your life.

Watch how Tony Robbins helps a young woman understand the primary question that had driven her to make a lot of stupid and self-destructive decisions. It’s amazing to see how, by understanding her own primary question, she liberates herself and takes herself to a new level.

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Contributor Jennifer Jolly shows you some ingenius ideas for re-purposing an old smartphone. (USA TODAY)

(Photo: Roddy Blelloch for USA TODAY)

It’s not you, it’s me. I love you, I’m just not in lovewith you.

Just because you’re swooning over the newest smartphone doesn’t mean you have to just ditch the old one. I mean, it’s been pressed to your face or cradled in the palm of your hand for a few years now, surely you don’t want to just throw out your old handset like yesterday’s soggy takeout coffee cup.

Here are five fantastic ways to repurpose that trusty gadget so it can go on faithfully serving you for many years to come.

1. Turn it into a video surveillance system for your house

Just download the free Presence app on your old iOS device, pair it with your new fancy iPhone, and voila! You now have a top-notch security camera and motion detector thanks to the fantastic video capabilities of your old gadget. You can use it to keep an eye on your home base in real time, and have it send you alerts when there’s something fishy going on.

2. Use it to keep an eye on the newborn

Take that spare phone and turn it into a high-tech baby monitor with an app like Dormifor Android phones. You can check real-time video right from the app, and it even has two-way audio as well, so you can whisper sweet nothings to your little one, even if you’re miles away. A similar app called Cloud Baby Monitor works on iOS devices, and it even lets you apply a soothing “night light” using the phone’s built-in LED.

3. Make it do scientific research

Want your old smartphone to do something you can really be proud of? BIONC is an app from the Space Science Laboratory at U.C. Berkeley that uses the power of your phone to do work on serious scientific problems, from studying diseases to forecasting global warming. When you plug your device into a power outlet the BIONC app will request data to work on from a central server and proceed to work through it using your phone’s processor. It then sends the processed data back to the scientists who use it in their research. It’s one of the coolest things your phone can do, and it can do it right from your countertop!

The Hudway app let’s you see directions on your windshield.(Photo: USA TODAY)

4. Make it a master navigator

Your phone is probably already your favorite navigation tool, so if you replaced it with a new gadget, why not let it continue its GPS duties in a whole new way? The Hudway app is unbelievably cool for one special reason: It actually lets you see your directions and route right on your windshield. The reflection of the app on the glass of your windshield acts as a crazy-cool heads-up display to help you navigate in all kinds of conditions, especially in fog or heavy rain.

5. Let it keep doing what it’s already doing

Just because you have a fantastic new smartphone, that doesn’t mean your old gadget has to stop doing the work it’s been doing all along. A spare smartphone is great as a media player, a digital camera, a gaming device, personal organizer, and even a great toy for kids to enjoy educational games and apps. You paid a whole bunch of cash for your previous phone, so make sure you get the most out of it, and take some of the battery-draining work off of your shiny new gadget’s hands.

The best part of repurposing your phone is that no matter what task you want it to do, you can always change things up later on. If you decide you don’t need a GPS unit, it’s still a great portable gaming system or video surveillance unit! Just about the only thing it can’t do is brew you a cup of coffee — but that’s surely on the roadmap for the smartphone of the future.

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech contributor and host of USA TODAY’s digital video show TECH NOW. E-mail her at techcomments@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter @JenniferJolly.

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(Frey Freyday is simply a bunch of inspirational, motivational and other quotes meant to make you think, reflect, smile, even laugh a bit. Hopefully helpful, useful stuff..)

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If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.-Bruce Lee

– My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.-Steve Jobs

– No matter how busy you are, you must take time to make the other person feel important.-Mary Kay Ash

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Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.-William Penn

– The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.-Bertrand Russell

– There’s so much time in a day. You could have breakfast, lunch, and dinner on 3 different continents. You could outline the book you’re going to write, start the screenplay adaptation, and watch “Gone With The Wind,” before the sun even sets. Spend a day at work, and still have 16 hours left over. Or you could just think 60,000 different thoughts as you tool all over your town. Hey, the record for climbing Mt. Everest is under 9 hours, leaving 15 to nap and go Yeti searching. There’s so much time in a day, So much. -You’re rich, – The Universe tut.com

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If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?-John Wooden

– We must use time wisely and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.-Nelson Mandela

– Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.-Henry Ford

– Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.-Napoleon Hill

– In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.-Paul Harvey

– Time = Life, Therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.-Alan Lakein

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Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.-M. Scott Peck

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I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.-Steven Wright

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Caffeine: The Silent Killer of Success

BY Travis Bradberry, Ph.D.- posted on LinkedIn- September 08, 2014

This week’s tip for improving your performance is the most simple and straightforward method I’ve provided thus far. For many people, this tip has the potential to have a bigger impact than any other single action. The catch? You have to cut down on caffeine, and as any caffeine drinker can attest, this is easier said than done.

For those who aren’t aware, the ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90% of top performers are high in emotional intelligence. These individuals are skilled at managing their emotions (even in times of high stress) in order to remain calm and in control.

The Good: Isn’t Really Good

Most people start drinking caffeine because it makes them feel more alert and improves their mood. Many studies suggest that caffeine actually improves cognitive task performance (memory, attention span, etc.) in the short-term. Unfortunately, these studies fail to consider the participants’ caffeine habits. New research from Johns Hopkins Medical School shows that performance increases due to caffeine intake are the result of caffeine drinkers experiencing a short-term reversal of caffeine withdrawal. By controlling for caffeine use in study participants, John Hopkins researchers found that caffeine-related performance improvement is nonexistent without caffeine withdrawal. In essence, coming off caffeine reduces your cognitive performance and has a negative impact on your mood. The only way to get back to normal is to drink caffeine, and when you do drink it, you feel like it’s taking you to new heights. In reality, the caffeine is just taking your performance back to normal for a short period.

The Bad: Adrenaline

Drinking caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the source of the “fight or flight” response, a survival mechanism that forces you to stand up and fight or run for the hills when faced with a threat. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response. This is great when a bear is chasing you, but not so great when you’re responding to a curt email. When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state, your emotions overrun your behavior.

Irritability and anxiety are the most commonly seen emotional effects of caffeine, but caffeine enables all of your emotions to take charge.

The negative effects of a caffeine-generated adrenaline surge are not just behavioral. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that large doses of caffeine raise blood pressure, stimulate the heart, and produce rapid shallow breathing, which readers of Emotional Intelligence 2.0 know deprives the brain of the oxygen needed to keep your thinking calm and rational.

The Ugly: Sleep

When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, shuffling through the day’s memories and storing or discarding them (which causes dreams), so that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your self-control, focus, memory, and information processing speed are all reduced when you don’t get enough—or the right kind—of sleep. Your brain is very fickle when it comes to sleep. For you to wake up feeling rested, your brain needs to move through an elaborate series of cycles. You can help this process along and improve the quality of your sleep by reducing your caffeine intake.

Here’s why you’ll want to: caffeine has a six-hour half-life, which means it takes a full twenty-four hours to work its way out of your system. Have a cup of joe at eight a.m., and you’ll still have 25% of the caffeine in your body at eight p.m. Anything you drink after noon will still be at 50% strength at bedtime. Any caffeine in your bloodstream—with the negative effects increasing with the dose—makes it harder to fall asleep.

When you do finally fall asleep, the worst is yet to come. Caffeine disrupts the quality of your sleep by reducing rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the deep sleep when your body recuperates and processes emotions. When caffeine disrupts your sleep, you wake up the next day with an emotional handicap. You’re naturally going to be inclined to grab a cup of coffee or an energy drink to try to make yourself feel better. The caffeine produces surges of adrenaline, which further your emotional handicap. Caffeine and lack of sleep leave you feeling tired in the afternoon, so you drink more caffeine, which leaves even more of it in your bloodstream at bedtime. Caffeine very quickly creates a vicious cycle.

Withdrawal

Like any stimulant, caffeine is physiologically and psychologically addictive. If you do choose to lower your caffeine intake, you should do so slowly under the guidance of a qualified medical professional. The researchers at Johns Hopkins found that caffeine withdrawal causes headache, fatigue, sleepiness, and difficulty concentrating. Some people report feeling flu-like symptoms, depression, and anxiety after reducing intake by as little as one cup a day. Slowly tapering your caffeine dosage each day can greatly reduce these withdrawal symptoms.

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(Frey Freyday is simply a bunch of inspirational, motivational and other quotes meant to make you think, reflect, smile, even laugh a bit. Hopefully helpful, useful stuff..)
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In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.-Dalai Lama
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Just put yourself ahead in time, pretend that it’s next month already, and imagine that the past 4 weeks just totally rocked. Every hope you now possess for the coming weeks has manifested. Every challenge was breezed through. Every cool person stayed cool. Every trickster became an ally. There were happy surprises along the way, and you got plenty of sleep. This is how we roll. Kung Fu – The Universe (www.tut.com)
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Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!-Bob Marley
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Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.-Jonathan Swift
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Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.-Warren Bennis
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Success is about dedication. You may not be where you want to be or do what you want to do when you’re on the journey. But you’ve got to be willing to have vision and foresight that leads you to an incredible end.-Usher
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Take time to create a vision of you in the future with what you want. Then just take action to make the vision real. -Jim Frey
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Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world.-Joel A. Barker
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Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.-Jack Welch
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Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.-Carl Jung
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A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown.-Denis Waitley
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Where there is no vision, there is no hope.-George Washington Carver
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Forget about trying to compete with someone else. Create your own pathway. Create your own new vision.-Herbie Hancock
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Without vision you don’t see, and without practicality the bills don’t get paid.-Paul Engle
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…to carry on a successful business must have imagination. She/He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.-Charles M. Schwab
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BONUS:
Here is a good Ted Talk about staying true to a vision

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If you read any of my other blog posts, you would know that 2009 was a tough year for me.

Like many, I became unemployed for the first time.

I also lost both my parents, and lost other relatives in our family.

However -I think things were starting to go from good to worse before that and mostly because of my attitude- my focus -my choice of vocabulary……..

…..I could put it this way – from about 2001 through 2008 things improved for me financially and otherwise. Things got better on the whole. However for whatever reason in late 2006, 2007, 2008, I start focusing on the wrong things.

I started using vocabulary and questions and words that were not good, not empowering.

For instance; I have a great wife – but at that time I really focused on what she was doing wrong -little things, big things. They weren’t anything out of the ordinary; she’s human, I’m human, we all make mistakes and do little things that irritate one another. That’s all these things were.

I was focusing on things around my house that didn’t work. I believe this probably was one of the major issues for me. In 2007 we bought a new house, we paid more than I really wanted to and found out later that there were lots of things that needed to be fixed and I got angry and bitter and focused on those bad things. I totally forgot the beautiful surrounding, the neighborhood, the value, and the simple fact that I could buy a home.

The other thing was my vocabulary. I would ask questions like “Can it get any worse? How can this get any worse? Why are these bad things happening to me? Why can’t I make more money? Why am I so unlucky? What other bad things are about to happen?” Etc. etc….. you get the idea. Everyone’s brain is like a computer – ask a question and it will search for answers. Ask a bad/disempowerint/negative question and you’ll get an answer “Why am I so unlucky?” …. your brain will search for things, true or not, to answer it.

Ask a positive question “Why am I so lucky?” and yes, your brain will search for things, true or not, to answer it.

You must already understand that I was making more money than I ever had before. I had a nicer house than I ever had before. I had (and still have) two beautiful daughters, a caring beautiful wife, friends, family, and lots of great things. My parents and many loved ones were alive with me then.

Then there were my poor choices with words and questions.

I would often use dis-empowering, negative words and apply them to everyday things. For instance I’d say that some basic thing in daily life was “horrific.” Meanwhile, it was something as simple as a busy day and I would be tied up until late…often with productive things or customer meetings (revenue generators).

I would often use words/phrases like “that’s crazy, that’s outrageous, that’s terrible,” in my vocabulary – which really blew things out of proportion. A day that’s busy with lots of opportunities is by no means horrific.

At work, I went from being someone who had a reputation of as a great communicator; diplomatic and able to get along with everyone – even ‘difficult people’, to someone that became known as being a little sharp, blunt and less forgiving. I wasn’t even sure how that happened. Almost overnight people seemed to not enjoy communicating with me as much as before.

My focus:

I would focus on the things that my coworkers and colleagues did wrong. This is Not good especially in a team environment. I didn’t often offer a solution. (I often say it’s good to offer a solution if you’re gonna complain-or just don’t complain) I would just complain without anything constructive to say. I got bitter I would focus on it at night in bed.

I would focus on those things that were not working.

Then 2008 came, the financial crisis hit, and we were told that we were losing our jobs. Of course I was angry and better about that, and I had a bad attitude about finding a job. Then, in retrospect, I think that my reputation of being a tough guy may have hurt me finding a job. It is hard for me to say that but it’s probably true.

In early 2009, my parents died and we lost three other relatives that my wife and I both loved from her family. I struggled for a long time.

It was very tough on me as a man as a father and as a provider.

I knew I was in a funk. I knew I needed some help. Even though we were very tight on money I hired a coach. I got myself some good books to read and just tried to work out of it.

It was and is really simple in concept but hard in practice:

Focus on what works.

Focus on what you want (not what you don’t want).

Focus on the present, the now, be aware.

Take action.

Picture, imagine, and visualize good things (instead of bad things, which is simply worrying.)

Ask good questions. Your brain will find good stuff no matter what, no matter how small and your focus will be on the good stuff.

Lastly, really make an effort to be happy. I don’t mean being selfish and focusing on what I want but being happy with simple things in life.

Being happy with what we have now. I have had so many good things and I lost many of them. I didn’t necessarily enjoy them then but I wish I had the back.

But I’m happy now with what I have and I enjoy them.

We all need to enjoy the moment, find joy right now. Time goes so fast.

I also avoid things that make me unhappy. I’m not talking about chores at home or things to do at work. I am talking about people with negative energy, the evening news, reality television, …..things that I know are low energy or negative energy and things that are not empowering.

We all know all of the above things, perhaps.

I agree, maybe none of these are ‘lightning strikes’ or Eurekas.

I have read them over and over through the years but it is really only after I’ve had those tragedies, the unemployment that I looked in the mirror and finally tried to put them into my life.

I certainly have bad days and I still focus on bad things and I slip but

I tell you from the bottom of my heart, over and over again, these things I’ve mentioned above; focus on good things, focus on what works, live in the present, be happy with what you have, be happy for the simple things, focus on what you can do now-take action, asking great questions – have all helped me immensely in the past five years. Try it.

I’m still not out of the woods but I’m certainly happier and I’m moving in the right direction now and I feel better about life and life is improving.